Quick Links - Poets.org

follow poets.org

Search form

The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets. For over three generations, the Academy has connected millions of people to great poetry through programs such as National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world; Poets.org, the Academy’s popular website; American Poets, a biannual literary journal; and an annual series of poetry readings and special events. Since its founding, the Academy has awarded more money to poets than any other organization.

“Thoreau was, among so many other things, a marvelous walker; he used walking not only as a mode of transportation but also as mode of observation—it allowed him to see his world, not just with his eyes, but with his entire body. This piece is from a series that tries to capture the rhythm of that intimate engagement.”

from "Thoreau"

In the essay “A Winter Walk,” which predated the more famous essay “Walking”by a few years, Thoreau paid particular attention to the astonishing array of whites

from fog to snow to frost to the crystals growing outward on threads of light. Thefact that white is separately known. That it is its own wildness, entirely exterior,

like all weather you notice is a version of an open room coming throughthe wind in prisms. White holds light in a suspended state, unleashing it later

across a field of snow or a sheet of water at just the right angle to make the surfacea solid, and on we go walking. Goethe’s Theory of Colors depicted each one

as an intense zone of human activity overflowing its object into feeling there isa forest through which something white is flying through a wash of white, which is

the presence of all colors until red, for instance, is needed for a bird or greenfor a world.

Copyright @ 2014 by Cole Swensen. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-a-Day on July 2, 2014.

Copyright @ 2014 by Cole Swensen. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-a-Day on July 2, 2014.

Cole Swensen

Born in 1955, Cole Swensen is the author of more than ten poetry collections, including Landscapes on a Train (Nightboat Books, 2015). She is coeditor with David St. John of the anthology American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of New Poetry (W. W. Norton, 2009).

by this poet

erodes the line between being and place becomes the place of being time and sothe house turns in the snow is why a ghost always has the architecture of a stormThe architect tore down room after room until the sound

noctes illustratas
(the night has houses)
and the shadow of the fabulous
broken into handfuls--these
can be placed at regular intervals,
candles
walking down streets at times eclipsed by trees.
Certain cells, it's